He lingers on notions of class. Who are these office workers, exactly? Somehow they are “neither of the working class nor of the elite holders of capital.” They dress well; they’re clean and pale, as aristocrats once were.

Can we refer to office workers, as some do, as knowledge workers? Perhaps not. Mr. Saval quotes Peter Drucker, the management consultant, who said: “They expect to be ‘intellectuals.’ And they find that they are just ‘staff.’ ” The author says it out loud:

Although both archetype and stereotype draw from a “type” of person to create character, the difference is that archetype will use the template as a starting place, and stereotype uses it as the end point.

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Archetype(n): a very typical example of a certain person or thing; types that fit fundamental human motifs.

Stereotype(n): A widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.

Trope(n): devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members’ minds and expectations.

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If tropes seem a little too much like to stereotypes for comfort, that’s because, technically speaking, they are stereotypes. “A Trope is a stereotype that writers find useful in communicating with readers.” (x) However,

because the word stereotype has become so stigmatized in society, we prefer to think of tropes as specific to storytelling.

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Categorization

Categorization is the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood.[1] Categorization implies that objects are grouped into categories, usually for some specific purpose. Ideally, a category illuminates a relationship between the subjects and objects of knowledge. Categorization is fundamental in language, prediction, inference, decision making and in all kinds of environmental interaction.

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Since the research by Eleanor Rosch and George Lakoff in the 1970s, categorization can also be viewed as the process of grouping things based on prototypes—the idea of necessary and sufficient conditions is almost never met in categories of naturally occurring things. It has also been suggested that categorization based on prototypes is the basis for human development, and that this learning relies on learning about the world via embodiment.

A cognitive approach accepts that natural categories are graded (they tend to be fuzzy at their boundaries) and inconsistent in the status of their constituent members.